Mark Ramprakash is to call time on his glittering career by announcing his
retirement from first-class cricket on Thursday.

The 42-year-old Surrey and former England batsman, who may well be the last player to score 100 first-class centuries, has decided to bow out after 25 seasons of county cricket.

The announcement has been timed for Thursday to avoid it coinciding with the funeral today of Ramprakash’s team-mate, Tom Maynard, in Cardiff.

It is believed Ramprakash made his move after Surrey indicated that his contract, which expires at the end of this season, was unlikely to be renewed.

In May, Ramprakash was dropped by Surrey for the first time since he joined them from Middlesex 11 years ago after he had scraped together just 62 runs in his first eight innings of the season including a rare pair against Worcestershire.

He had a spell playing for Surrey’s second team and for Stanmore, his first club in the Middlesex Premier League, but was recalled by Surrey for their rain-affected County Championship match against Sussex at Horsham four weeks ago.

A move to another county was a possibility for Ramprakash but he is the oldest player on the circuit and with counties encouraged to blood youth by incentive payments from the England and Wales Cricket Board, finding another club might have proved difficult.

Ramprakash will end his career as the most prolific county batsman of modern times with 114 first-class centuries to his name, the 100th of them against Yorkshire at Headingley in 2008.

He has scored 35,659 runs in 461 first-class matches since he first played for Middlesex in 1987 and a further 13,273 runs in one-day cricket.

Ramprakash played 52 Tests for England between 1991 and 2002 without achieving the same levels of consistency he enjoyed at county level.

He averaged 27.32 in Test cricket as opposed to 53.14 in county cricket with two centuries, 133 against Australia at the Oval in 2001 and a Test best 154 against the West Indies in Bridgetown in 1997-98.

Ramprakash scored 1,000 runs in an English season 20 times, passing 2,000 runs three times, in 1995, 2006 and 2007.

He became the first man to score 2,000 runs and average more than 100 twice, in 2007. In 2006 he scored 2,000 in 20 innings and posted scores of at least 150 in five consecutive matches.

But Ramprakash struggled to maintain those high standards on the seamer-friendly pitches that have prevailed this season and in April he complained to The Daily Telegraph that conditions this year were the most difficult for batting that he had encountered during his illustrious career.

While Ramprakash ponders a future away from cricket he should not be short of job offers. He has already been used as a studio summariser by Sky Sports and he demonstrated his versatility by winning Strictly Come Dancing in 2006 as partner to professional dancer Karen Hardy.